Friday, October 27, 2017

Here are three stories that have
been in the news recently. The corporate media have presented them as
unrelated; nothing could be further from the truth .

An article in the New Yorker
details how the Sackler family’s privately owned Purdue Pharma was a major
force in creating the current opioid epidemic, thanks to deceptive marketing
and a suspiciously cozy relation with the FDA. The multibillionaire family also
played a role in promoting the overuse of Valium and Librium starting in the
1960s. Purdue has had to pay some fines and a few of its officers have been
punished with brief probation periods, but these are slaps on the wrist considering the billions the Sacklers have raked in over the years. Until recently the family’s
members have been best known for their philanthropic work.

While looking the other way as de
facto drug cartels like the Sackler family operate freely here, the US
government continues to spend billions of dollars on a decades-long “drug war”
that has created chaos and caused tens of thousands of deaths in Latin America
and the Caribbean. One example is an operation in Honduras five years ago that
killed four civilians. Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration were
involved, and the agency dishonestly and typically blamed the victims—including
two pregnant women and a 14-year-old boy. A video obtained by the New York
Times reveals the absurdity of the DEA’s claim.

Juana Jackson, right, a victim of the DEA's operation in Ahuas. Foto: dickemahonduras

Inevitably, thousands of people,
including large numbers of children, try to flee here from the crime and
violence the US government has created in their own countries. Many of the
children have been incarcerated in detention centers and then shipped back home
to face more drug-induced violence. This was the policy under the Obama
administration, but it’s not good enough for the Trump regime. In September
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the kids are “wolves in sheep's
clothing” who “prey upon our communities” and “decapitate individuals with
machetes, baseball bats and chains.” In response to the supposed problem, the
White House wants to make the asylum system even
more difficult than it is currently.

What is the result of waging a
“drug war” in other countries and tolerating drug pushing here by Big Pharma? A
Times graph gives us a good idea: the
US had less than 10,000 deaths from drug overdoses in 1980; in 2016 the number
was more than 59,000.

We have to wonder how outraged the
US population would be if the media explained the links between these
stories. But if the media won’t do it, it’s up to activists to get out to the
public and connect the dots.—TPOI editor

The Family That Built an Empire of
Pain

The Sackler dynasty’s ruthless
marketing of painkillers has generated billions of dollars—and millions of
addicts.

By Patrick Radden Keefe, New
Yorker

October 30, 2017

The north wing of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art is a vast, airy enclosure featuring a banked wall of glass and
the Temple of Dendur, a sandstone monument that was constructed beside the Nile
two millennia ago and transported to the Met, brick by brick, as a gift from
the Egyptian government. The space, which opened in 1978 and is known as the
Sackler Wing, is also itself a monument, to one of America’s great
philanthropic dynasties. The Brooklyn-born brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and
Raymond Sackler, all physicians, donated lavishly during their lifetimes to an
astounding range of institutions, many of which today bear the family name: the
Sackler Gallery, in Washington; the Sackler Museum, at Harvard; the Sackler
Center for Arts Education, at the Guggenheim; the Sackler Wing at the Louvre;
and Sackler institutes and facilities at Columbia, Oxford, and a dozen other
universities.[...]

D.E.A. Says Hondurans Opened Fire
During a Drug Raid. A Video Suggests Otherwise.

“The D.E.A. convinced themselves
of a false version of events due to arrogance, false assumptions, and
ignorance,” said Tim Rieser, an aide to Senator Patrick J. Leahy.

By Mattathias Schwartz, New
York Times

October 23, 2017

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement
Administration has for five years steadfastly defended the behavior of its
agents in a late-night drug seizure carried out with Honduran forces on the
remote Mosquito Coast, a mission that resulted in the deaths of four Honduran
civilians.

In the D.E.A.’s view, the dead —
one man, two women and a 14-year-old boy — were among those on a boat that shot
at a canoe carrying a joint D.E.A.-Honduran antidrug team. The D.E.A. said it
had evidence in the form of night-vision video taken from a surveillance plane
showing an “exchange of gunfire” between the two vessels after the larger boat
collided with the canoe carrying the agents.[...]

BOSTON — Attorney General Jeff
Sessions is warning that many unaccompanied minors trying to enter the U.S. across
its southern border are gang members whom the country should view as “wolves in
sheep's clothing.”

In a speech to local and national
law enforcement this afternoon in Boston, Sessions said transnational gangs
like Central America-based MS-13, use what’s known as the ‘unaccompanied
refugee minors’ program to “as a means by which to recruit new members.”[...]

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Neoliberal strictures, support for oligarchs, and the War on
Drugs have impoverished millions and destabilized Latin America.

By Jeff Faux, The Nation

October 18, 2017

As his price for not deporting roughly 800,000 “Dreamers”
who came to this country as children, Donald Trump demands an escalated war
against immigrants, topped by his nightmarish 2,000-mile wall along the Mexican
border. Democrats have said no. Whether or not some sort of deal is eventually
struck, the country will remain deeply divided over undocumented immigrants
from the south.

Unfortunately, though, that debate is entirely focused on
domestic policy—how to treat the undocumented after they have arrived.[…]

Friday, October 20, 2017

Many of the current misconceptions about immigration were
heavily promoted by the corporate media in the past, but establishment outlets
have occasionally published sensible articles on the subject
recently—especially since Trump entered the White House.

In this selection, a New York Times piece shows
that “amnesty” shouldn’t be a dirty
word—living here without legal status is one of the few violations that
don’t get a routine amnesty through the statute of limitations. At the Washington
Post a Mexican-American citizen explains that she isn’t better than
undocumented Mexicans just because her father immigrated here before there were
limits on Mexican immigration. And at Bloomberg News Noah Smith
deconstructs the fantasy that mass
deportationswould somehow help U.S. citizens (although he does repeat the
tired and questionable cliché about crops rotting in the fields).—TPOI editor

The Word May Be Toxic, but Amnesty Is EverywhereBy Amanda Taub, New York TimesOctober 11, 2017

The biggest taboo in the immigration debate is the idea of
an “amnesty.” Immigration opponents routinely paint amnesties for undocumented
immigrants in the United States as catastrophic blows to the rule of law.

The implication is that the only proper thing to do is
enforce laws uniformly, all the time, without exceptions — and that an
immigration amnesty would thus be a threat to truth, justice and the American
way.

But there’s a problem with that theory: Amnesties, though
not always labeled as such, are central to how the nation’s legal system
functions.[...]

My family immigrated here legally. I used to think that
made us special.

It took travel and time for me to realize how arbitrary
and unfair our immigration system is.

By Amanda Machado, Washington Post

October 13, 2017

Amanda Machado is a writer and educator who lives in
Oakland, Calif.

During my first year in college, in 2006, I walked across
campus one day and found hundreds of white crosses staked on the main green. An
immigration activist group had created a mock graveyard to honor people who had
died crossing the border. As I passed the demonstration, I felt uncomfortable.

As a Latina with U.S. citizenship, I didn’t know how to
identify with the undocumented-immigration battle, which is again raging after
hard-line immigration proposals from the White House.[…]

Thursday, October 19, 2017

A powerful feature article in the Times this week gets across the real
suffering of many native-born U.S. workers as their industrial jobs are
relocated to Mexico and they are forced into lower-paying service jobs,
often in competition with immigrants from Mexico. Deprived of any real analysis
of the situation—about the way U.S. trade policy has driven
immigrationfrom Mexico, and the way U.S. immigration restrictions force
many Mexicans to accept rock-bottom wages in their own country—many displaced
U.S. workers have turned to Trump’s nonsensical promises.

A Huffington Post article about today's nationwide UNITE HERE rallies shows part of what we need to do to counter this. Whatever problems the union may have, its president, D.
Taylor, at least understands that the answer to Trumpism for U.S. workers must
include solidarity
with immigrants and organizing
to improve service jobs: “As much
as we’d all love for manufacturing jobs to come back,” he says, “we think we
need to turn these [hospitality] jobs into good jobs.”—TPOI editor

Is “Make it here” the answer? Photo: Alyssa Schukar/NY Times

Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her. Then Her Job Moved to
Mexico.

By Farah Stockman, New York Times

October 14, 2017

INDIANAPOLIS — The man from Mexico followed a manager
through the factory floor, past whirring exhaust fans, beeping forklifts, and
drilling machines that whined against steel. Workers in safety glasses looked
up and stared. Others looked away. Shannon Mulcahy felt her stomach lurch.

It was December 2016. The Rexnord Corporation’s factory
still churned out bearings as it always had. Trucks still dropped off steel
pipes at the loading dock. Bill Stinnett, a die-hard Indiana Pacers fan, still
cut them into pieces. The pieces still went to the “turning” department, where
they were honed into rings as small as a bracelet or as big as a basketball.
Then to “heat treat,” where Shannon — who loves heavy metal music and abandoned
dogs — hardened them with fire.[…]

The hospitality union Unite Here plans demonstrations in
40 cities: “We need protections for the workers who drive this industry.”

By Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post

October 14, 2017

The hospitality workers union Unite Here was tangling with
Donald Trump long before he ever became president. While the business mogul
made his run for the Republican nomination last year, the group waged ― and
eventually won ― a scrappy battle to unionize the housekeepers and restaurant
workers at his hotel on the Las Vegas strip.

Now that Trump occupies the White House, the union’s
president, D. Taylor, says the best place to fight his presidency and his
policies is still in the workplace.

“Most of these jobs are not good jobs,” Taylor said of the
sort of hotel and food service jobs that Trump, as a businessman, was best
known for. “The only way those jobs change is if people have good union
contracts, decent wages, good healthcare and retirement benefits. As much as
we’d all love for manufacturing jobs to come back, we think we need to turn
these [hospitality] jobs into good jobs.” […]

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

What’s behind the recent rise in wages for undocumented
workers? It could be immigrants’ rights activism.

Graffiti on the Mexican side of the wall. Photo: Jonathan McIntosh/Flickr

David L. Wilson, Jacobin

October 16, 2017

Last Sunday, Trump’s White House released a list of
immigration demands that Democrats must meet if they want to renew the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has protected hundreds of
thousands of young immigrants from deportation. The demands, if met, would mean
more criminalization, more surveillance, and more fear for undocumented
immigrants.

Republicans justify this punitive approach by insisting that
immigrants are “taking our jobs,” driving down wages for citizens and making
the economic situation more desperate for all.

But a look back at a decade of data shows that if
Republicans’ goal is to bolster wages, they’re going about it all wrong.[...]

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Since Mr. Trump was elected, 34
people facing deportation have publicly taken refuge inside of churches,
including four this week…

By Laurie Goodstein, New
York Times

October 11,
2017

Facing deportation to Mexico and
fearing separation from his children, Javier Flores Garcia took refuge last
year in a Methodist church in downtown Philadelphia. Members of the
congregation prepared a makeshift bedroom for him in the basement, and promised
to give him sanctuary, no matter how long he needed it.

On Wednesday, after nearly 11
months, Mr. Flores walked out of the church for good, a rare winner among the
tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have fought battles over
deportation this year.[...]

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Liberal commentators have written favorably about the
program in the past.... But E-Verify isn't really any better than Trump's
"big beautiful wall."

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

October 12, 2017

E-Verify is back on the political agenda.

For years, politicians have wanted to force all of the country's
7.7 million private employers to check new hires against this online system --
which compares employees' documents with government databases in order to catch
immigrants without work authorization -- but so far, the efforts to impose a
universal E-Verify requirement have failed. Now the idea has been given new
life by a tentative agreement that President Trump and Democratic leaders made
on September 13 to promote legislation protecting the immigrants previously
covered by President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA).[...]

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

For the moment media coverage of immigration policy is
mostly focused on the whether Trump and the Democrats can make a deal on a new
DREAM Act, but some outlets have been reporting on the little-noticed results
of Trump policies from earlier in the year.

Below are links to The Intercept covering internal
ICE emails about the nationwide raids last February, the American-Statesman
reporting on the murder of a Mexican immigrant detained in March, Splinter
News giving examples of the calls received by Trump’s Victims of Immigration
Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, and a report from Human Rights First showing
how the administration has increased the detention of asylum seekers—and that
as of April an average of 40,000 immigrants (both asylum seekers and others)
were being held in detention each night.—TPOI editor

UPDATE, October 17, 2017: The Interceptnow
reports that then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, currently Trump’s chief
of staff, personally directed ICE agents to hype up the “criminality” of the
people detained in the February raids.

By Alice Speri, The Intercept

October 4, 2017

As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up
across the country last February in the first mass raids of the Trump administration,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials went out of their way to portray
the people they detained as hardened criminals, instructing field offices to
highlight the worst cases for the media and attempting to distract attention
from the dozens of individuals who were apprehended despite having no criminal
background at all.[…]

Juan Coronilla-Guerrero’s wife warned a federal judge this
spring that her husband would be killed if the U.S. government followed through
with his deportation.

Her prediction came true last week. Three months after the
former Austin resident was taken back to central Mexico by federal authorities,
his body was found on the side of a road in San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato,
near where he had been living with his wife’s family.[…]

This Is What It Looks Like When the President Asks People
to Snitch on Their Neighbors

By Daniel Rivero and Brendan O'Connor, Splinter

October 3, 2017

In April, the Trump Administration launched what it called
the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, with a stated
mission to “provide proactive, timely, adequate, and prfessional services to
victims of crimes committed by removable aliens.” But internal logs of calls to
VOICE obtained by Splinter show that hundreds of Americans seized on the
hotline to lodge secret accusations against acquaintances, neighbors, or even
their own family members, often to advance petty personal grievances.[…]

Judge and Jailer: Asylum Seekers Denied Parole in Wake of
Trump Executive Order

By Human Rights First

September 29, 2017

On January 25, 2017, President Donald Trump issued an
executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to allocate
“all legally available resources” to construct and operate immigration
detention facilities and hold immigrants there for the duration of their court
proceedings. In the eight months since, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) has largely refused to release asylum seekers from detention on parole,
leaving many locked up in immigration detention facilities and jails.[…]

When President Donald Trump announced the end of the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September, he said he
was giving Congress six months to find a legislative solution that would allow
the 690,000 young unauthorized immigrants currently protected from deportation
under DACA to stay in the country legally.

It turns out his White House has very specific ideas about
what they want that solution to be.[…]

President Donald Trump’s renewed demands for a border wall
and dramatic changes to immigration laws in exchange for deportation
protections for young undocumented immigrants may help Democrats by keeping the
issue alive in the 2018 election year.

Polls show voters side with Democrats on shielding the
immigrants, known as Dreamers. By adopting a hard line, Trump is setting the
stage for a prolonged fight in Congress that could help Democrats gain seats in
the House and Senate.[…]

BALTIMORE (October 9, 2017) – The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s oldest social justice
organization, released the following statement in response to the immigration
principles proposed by the Trump Administration yesterday.

“Despite his insistence on preserving the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals program, the immigration reforms proposed by President
Trump last night prove once again that we cannot trust his hollow
assertions.”[…]

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Tule Lake is where more than 24,000 Japanese Americans were
imprisoned during World War II. The proposed three-mile-long, eight-feet-high,
barbed-wire fence would cut off Japanese American access to the site upon which
they and their families were incarcerated. They say a fence is necessary to
protect the site from wildlife, but birds are the major form of wildlife at the
airport and a fence is ineffective in preventing bird strikes.

#SaveTuleLake

We have until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 10 to write to
Modoc County and tell them we oppose the construction of a three-mile-long
fence that will close off an airport that sits on two-thirds of the former
concentration camp site.

If built, it will permanently close off
access to the barracks area where most people lived. A national civil
rights site will be irreparably damaged.[…]

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Join Mobilization for
Amnesty for All this Sunday, October 8, for
a book presentation and open discussion with Jane Guskin and David Wilson, the
authors of the newly published second edition of the book The Politics of Immigration: Questions and
Answers.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Just
moments ago, farmworker leaders from Migrant Justice and the CEO of Ben &
Jerry’s jointly signed the Milk with Dignity agreement. The
legally-binding contract establishes Ben & Jerry’s as the first company in
the dairy industry to implement the worker-driven human rights program.
This momentous occasion marks the beginning of a new day for dairy, one
that provides economic relief and support to struggling farm owners, in the
form of a premium paid by Ben & Jerry’s, while ensuring dignity and respect
for farmworkers.

Do
you use social media? Help us spread the word about this incredible victory
by sharing and retweeting!

Before
putting his signature on the document, Migrant Justice spokesperson Enrique
“Kike” Balcazar spoke to those assembled: “This is an historic moment for dairy
workers. We have worked tirelessly to get here, and now we move forward
towards a new day for the industry. We appreciate Ben & Jerry’s
leadership role and look forward to working together to implement a program
that ensures dignified housing and fair working conditions on dairy farms
across the region. And though this is the first, it won’t be the last agreement
of its kind.”

Today’s
signing ceremony brings to a close more than two years of public campaigning by
dairy workers and their allies, as well as intensive negotiations between
Migrant Justice and Ben & Jerry’s. The agreement follows the “Human
Rights Can’t Wait” speaking tour -- which brought dairy workers to a dozen
cities along the east coast -- and comes just two days before the October 5thNational Day of Action. Migrant Justice is
calling off the actions that were to take place at Ben & Jerry’s scoop
shops around the country in order to focus on the coming work of implementing
this ground-breaking agreement in Ben & Jerry’s supply chain.

Ben
& Jerry’s implementation of the Milk with Dignity program will result in
transformational changes to a troubled industry.

Farmworkers will see
concrete improvements in wages, scheduling, housing, and health and safety
protections

Farm owners will
receive a premium on their milk and support in improving working
conditions

Ben & Jerry’s can
sell a product made with cream produced free from human rights abuses

Consumers -- thousands
of whom have called for this change -- will be able to see their
solidarity with farmworkers bear fruit in the form of a major company’s
concrete commitment to promoting human rights through worker-driven social
responsibility.

This
watershed moment is only the beginning. As the program rolls out on the
farms in Ben & Jerry’s supply chain, dairy workers will be preparing to
expand Milk with Dignity to other companies. Your support over the past
years was crucial in getting to where we are today -- join us for this next
phase in the Milk with Dignity campaign!

Join us in calling on Ben & Jerry’s to respect the human
rights of workers in its dairy supply chain by signing the Milk with Dignity
agreement now!

This is part of a national day of action on Oct. 5, called
by Vermont dairy workers of Migrant Justice / Justicia Migrante
(https://migrantjustice.net/) who have been calling on Ben & Jerry’s to
ensure protections for workers in its dairy supply chain for nearly three
years.

Ben & Jerry’s has deferred and deflected on its
responsibility to ensure protections for workers in its dairy supply chain.

Since 2010, Vermont dairy workers have been educating Ben
& Jerry's about serious human rights violations in the industry.

In 2014, VT farmworkers called on Ben & Jerry's to join
their Milk with Dignity program to ensure respect for farmworker rights its
supply chain.

In June 2015, after over a dozen actions were planned at its
scoop shops across the country, Ben & Jerry's publicly committed to join
the Milk with Dignity program. But after two years of talk and no action,
hundreds of farmworkers and their allies re-launched the public campaign in
spring 2017-- including a historic 13-mile march to Ben & Jerry's Vermont
factory in June.

Ben & Jerry's CEO welcomed the marchers, assuring the
passionate crowd of supporters that Ben & Jerry's is "ready to go.”
Nearly two months have passed since then, and Ben & Jerry's has still not
made a legally binding commitment to the Program.

About The Politics of Immigration

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers is a book that goes beyond soundbites to tackle concerns about immigration in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. For immigrants and supporters, the book is a useful tool to confront stereotypes and disinformation. For those who are undecided about immigration, it lays out the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion. Ideal for classroom use, the updated and expanded 2017 edition provides a succinct overview of U.S. immigration history, policy, and practice, with detailed notes guiding readers toward further exploration.
Guskin and Wilson have written extensively on immigration and facilitated dozens of dialogues on the topic with students, community activists, congregations, and other public audiences. To arrange a dialogue or for more information, contact them at thepoliticsofimmigration@gmail.com.
To stay in the loop on author events and related resources, follow the book on Twitter (@Immigration_QA) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ImmigrationQA/).